


i can't help falling in love with you

by ksyy



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Depression, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, References to Depression, Sad, Triggers, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26145328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ksyy/pseuds/ksyy
Summary: Yamaguchi never intended to fall in love with Kei.But when he did, he felt like he was alive again, not having to deal with those scary feelings that he had to deal with before. Being in love saved him, but it also became a nightmare he couldn't wake up from.Being in love was the escape he had from his terrible life, until one day he coughed petals. Daisies petals.They were Kei's favorites flowers.
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei & Yamaguchi Tadashi, Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53
Collections: TsukkiYama Week 2020





	i can't help falling in love with you

**Author's Note:**

> lots of sensitive topics about suicide and depression and toxic family so be aware

Yamaguchi never intended to fall in love with Kei. 

As a kid, being around his best friend, watching the silly dinosaur documentaries and going stargazing was enough to make him happy. He enjoyed being by Tsukishima's side, it always made his chest feel warm whenever the blonde smiled at him or complimented him, and he would wait the entire day just to see Kei and hang out at his house. He couldn't wish for more, the way things were was more than he ever dreamed of. Having a friend was more than he ever dreamed of, being the useless and lonely kid he was. 

But then he went to high school and things changed completely. Tadashi didn't know when, or how, or why, but he was in love with Kei. It just happened. Maybe he had been in love for more time than he thought, maybe all the admiration he held for his friend was, in fact, a feeling much deeper and that he couldn't understand well when he was a kid. But now he could, and it was a bit terrifying. Being in love was sweet and bitter, it made him cry just to put a smile on his face right after, it made him overthink the little things for entire nights and sometimes he felt like he wasn't controlling his own body. It made him love and hate Kei, all of these at the same time.

But, besides all of these, being in love made him feel alive. 

It made him see the world much brighter than before, it made him smile more, it made him have a small hope, whenever Kei smiled at him and showed him that he cared about him, that someday and somehow, he maybe could be with Tsukishima and kiss him, hold his hand, be the one he called his lover. A single touch was enough to make his stomach feel like there was an eruption going on his body, a tiny smile would make him blush and force him to hide his face, a compliment was enough to make his entire day the best one he had, despite the hell his home was at night. And he couldn't help falling in love with Kei when he was so beautiful, intelligent, so charming with his sarcastic behavior and his never-ending coolness, when he was simply perfect.

Falling in love made Tadashi forget those weird feelings he had, that made him want to die. Falling in love was his salvation, and Kei was the light that guided him through the darkness he lived in. Falling in love hurt, but Tadashi was used to the pain.

However, falling in love also made his life a living hell. A nightmare he couldn't wake up from. 

It all started during a warm afternoon after practice, when he went home early because his parents wouldn't be there that day and he could be alone. It all started while he was watching TV and he coughed, a small white petal made its way to his lap. He thought the wind brought it inside, but he coughed again, and again, and again, until he couldn't breathe well anymore and he could do nothing but cough, hoping the pain would go away. When he finally stopped, breathing deep and out to calm down, he looked at the floor. It was full of the same small, white, and beautiful petals. Daisy's petals. 

Kei's favorite flowers were daisies.

Tadashi smiled nervously, not able to endure the situation. The pain he felt was real, the petals were real. Hanahaki was real, then? Was he going to die because of his love? Was it the price he paid for falling in love with his best friend? For being gay? What would he do? What should he do? He didn't get an answer to these questions, so he just let his knees fall on the floor, putting his hands on his face while he cried, the sobs making his breath irregular. He was so pathetic, so pitiful. There was no way he could afford the surgery, there was no way he could confess to Kei and lose his only friend and die alone. He didn't want Tsukishima to know how disgusting he was, he didn't want to lose him. He would breakdown if he was alone again. It would be the end of him.

But his life was going to end anyway, right? He should have died a long time ago. He knew he was not worth living.

So why try to save himself when he knew he had no future? Why have the hope of being loved when he wasn't worth it?

He got up and took the petals, throwing them in the trash as if nothing happened, as if those feelings didn't even exist, and then he stared at his reflection on the TV screen. He shouldn't try when he could just hide. Wait for the death, the one he should have met with a long time ago. He would pretend everything was okay, he would endure the pain and put a smile on his face. He would be strong, as Tsukishima. He would live his life the best he could before it ended, he would have memories, die with no regrets. It was for Kei, and he would do anything for Kei.

Maybe he was a coward for using it as a way to finally get rid of his life. Maybe he was cruel to say it was Kei's fault when he didn't even try to save himself. Maybe, just maybe, he was relieved that he didn't have the money for the surgery, because if he did he would blame himself much more for not considering it an option. But, who would want to erase their feelings like that? Tsukishima was a part of him, that he wouldn't let go so easily.

But then again, Yamaguchi didn't intend to fall in love with Kei. But he couldn't help falling in love with him when he was the only one who ever showed him any kind of affection in his entire life.

It had been a month and Tadashi was already used to his new routine of hiding the petals and any evidence about his disease. He learned how to control himself around Kei so he wouldn't cough so much, always walking behind him like a shadow so he wouldn't notice the petals. As it always had been, Kei ahead of him and he watching from behind, hiding. He was okay with it, he didn't allow himself to wish more than that when it was much more than he deserved. 

But, the fact that he got used to the disease didn't mean he accepted it or the fact that he would die. He cried in his room every day, not that it was something unusual to Tadashi, but now he didn't even try to hide it from his parents as he did before. He cried his heart out, not caring if his sobs were too loud, nor when one of his parents entered the room and moments after he didn't know anymore for what he was crying for, he just felt numb while his entire body was hurting. His arms, eyes, legs, lungs, his heart. He felt like he could break at any moment, hearing their screams from outside the room, making clear how unwanted he was by his own family. 

He always considered himself a coward, but not being able to even confess his feelings made him feel worse. His head was full of what-ifs and if-onlys, and the possibilities he knew he would never experience were like ghosts that never went away, always reminding him of how pathetic he was. What if he was a girl? What if his life with his parents wasn't the way it was? What if he was more like Kei? If only he was someone worth being with Kei, he wouldn't have this disease, they would be together and he would be happy. But that was something he would only have in his dreams.

However, every morning he woke up feeling empty, put some makeup on his face to pretend he didn't cry, and went to school to meet Tsukishima, showing him a big smile on his face that he didn't know if it was genuine anymore. His smiles around Kei used to be genuine ones because he truly felt happy with him, forgetting how his life was terrible and making the boy his own safe spot where he could even dare to be himself and try to be a little optimist. But lately he didn't feel like living, like being happy, he didn't feel anything at all besides that pain in his chest and the suffocating that the disease caused him. Although it was tiring, he kept the facade in front of Kei, hoping he would never discover his feelings. And Tadashi was proud of himself because his acting was good enough to make Tsukishima think he was tired due to their final tests.

The petals were easy to handle and didn't do much harm to him, and he even thought they were great company during those three months he lived with them daily, but they always made him cry. He never thought about the flowers though, or when they would come, because he avoided thinking about his future. It made him anxious, and he knew he was going to die anyway, so why bother? It was no use, and maybe if he was lucky enough he would die before they appeared.

Until the flowers showed up at school. He was with Kei, laughing at something he said when the usual feeling of the petals coming out showed up, this time much worse. He ran immediately, not bothering to give an explanation and glad that they were almost the only ones on that corridor while his vision became blurry and his lungs felt like burning. When he entered the bathroom, he couldn't even think about locking the bathroom door behind him and just went straight away to one of the stalls, vomiting in the open toilet. He didn't know how much time he spent there, but when he finally came to his senses again he noticed the water, full of daisies that had their pure white petals covered in his blood. His head was spinning, he didn't have the strength to get up, his legs and his whole body trembling. He noticed he was crying too, and the pain was not like anything he felt before. It didn't hurt, it _burned_. It was like there were one billion needles inside his throat, and whenever he took a breath they pricked from inside him, like in a torturous game. But that was far from being the worse of it all.

The worse was Kei's worried voice across the door.

"Tadashi, hey! Are you okay?" the punching on the door was getting more intense. Moments like these, when Tsukishima was worried about him, made his heart flicker with a tiny hope. That died right away, because he felt like he didn't have the right to hope for something he knew that would never happen, just to make himself get more hurt at the end.

Tadashi didn't know what to do. He couldn't open the door, he couldn't even get up, and he didn't know if he was able to speak. If it was because of the pain or because he was at a loss of words, not expecting Kei, of all people, to show up, he truly didn't know, too.

But he tried.

"I'm..." he coughed again, noticing that the pain got worse when he tried to and seeing the blood on his hand "...fine. Just... ate bad... food." was all he managed to say between his irregular breaths and coughs.

"Do you need help?" Kei asked, not less worried.

"No." he said, waiting for Kei to go away, but he didn't move an inch. He kept there. What was he still there for?

Tadashi waited a little more, and when his body allowed him to stand up, he did his best to clean everything and to put his best smile on his face when he left the bathroom, not even caring the suffocating pain on his throat whenever he laughed or said something during the rest of the day.

Tadashi was used to the pain, anyway.

When he reached his house, things got worse that night and he cried more than he ever did. If only he had the money to afford that stupid surgery, he wouldn't have to go through all of that. If only his parents didn't act like his existence was enough to piss them off, maybe he could have someone to rely on and not suffer by himself. But who was he trying to fool? If he had the money, he would never choose the surgery. And his parents would never give a damn shit about him. He would never be able to get rid of his memories of Kei, because a good part of who he was only existed because he met him. Tsukishima was a part of him, and if he had to live without it, it would feel like there was something lacking, something empty inside of him that he could never understand without those years and years of memories and their moments together.

That same night, Tadashi vomited so many flowers that he was too tired to even get up, not able to go to school the next morning. He used that time alone to think about how ironic it was that the only thing that kept him alive was the same reason why he would die. The same love that made him forget his problems became his worst problem in a blink of an eye. He didn't cry, though. He knew he didn't have that much time to cry. One month? Two if he was lucky enough? He didn't know.

He was too tired, he just wanted it all to end.

* * *

Tadashi kept going to school after he got better from the first day the flowers appeared. The others were less heavy and he learned to identify the symptoms when they were about to come out, such as the pain and the itching, and he could go to the bathroom as soon as he could or just hide in someplace. He wasn't scared of the blood anymore, the pain didn't bother him anymore, and he was getting even better on hiding it. Kei noticed he was going to the bathroom too much, but Tadashi said it was a condition he had that made him vomit sometimes. But as the frequency of the flowers grew, he avoided going to Tsukki's house at any cost, and his throat was so bad he couldn't speak properly anymore without crying.

Two weeks after the first flower incident, he stopped going to his school. Too tired due to the blood loss and the repetitive pain that made him dizzy. He texted Tsukishima every day, assuring him that yes he was alright, no his parents weren't hurting him again, no he wasn't having a crisis, yes he would come back soon.

They were all lies. He wasn't much of a liar when it came to telling things to Kei, but he didn't think straight anymore and all he wanted was that the time passed faster so he could finally rest.

He did his best to not try to think about Kei while he was at home, lying on his bed the entire day and staring at the ceiling. But how could he not think about him when he was literally everywhere? The songs his neighbor listened to that Kei loved, the reality shows that he watched at night and Tsukki hated, the books that he bought with the little money he had because Kei said they were good, and they really were, the things on his room that sometimes he brought over to Kei's house because he liked them and they would play together, even the dogs that barked at night reminded him of how Tsukishima was afraid of them. Everything reminded him of Kei, and if he tried his best to shut down his senses and don't pay attention at all to anything, he noticed that he had much more of the blonde inside him than he thought.

And, of course, the daisies. They were pretty and neat as Tsukki, their white petals were the same color as his headphones, the yellow just as his blonde hair, the green of his bag from their matching pair of bags. Tadashi searched on the internet that daisies meant true love, and he thought it really fitted the roles they were in, making him die for that so-called true love that didn't even notice his feelings. So dramatic that it could easily be a Shakespearean story. But it wasn't, it was real life and he had no escape.

Now, it's been a month and the flowers became terrible. He didn't bother to hide them from his parents anymore, and they didn't even care too, seeing how he would die eventually and they would get rid of him. He knew he was close to death and he tried to lie to Kei, saying he got really bad pneumonia and Tsukishima shouldn't go to his house because his parents were there and they were mad. Every day, he texted the blonde for hours, sometimes crying between the messages when noticing he wouldn't have it anymore, sometimes because the thought of Kei usually made him vomit more flowers than the usual and it hurt, it hurt too much.

It was Friday, and it was noon when Tadashi started to suffocate.

These type of days were his favorites because he used to go to Tsukki's house and spend the day there since his parents weren't home the entire day. But now, look at how he was. Dying. Crying.

His cellphone rang, and he used his force to grab it and see it was Tsukishima. How funny, he thought. He shouldn't answer the call, but he did, because he needed to hear his voice for the last time, even if he could barely speak.

"Tadashi! I'm going to your house, ok? I know your parents aren't home on Fridays."

Tadashi didn't answer. But his heavy breathing let Kei know he was there.

"Yamaguchi? Are you there?" Tsukishima waited a little before speaking again.

The freckled boy let out a heavy sigh. Breathing was becoming harder, but it wasn't so bad. Not yet.

"Yes." he noticed that he didn't have that much time and that Kei probably would take too long to arrive for them to talk properly before he...

Well, before he dies.

"Hey... Kei..." he added before Tsukishima could answer "I..." he took a deep breath, and it was harder than he thought "Thank you..."

"For what?" he heard the salty answer, and he would have laughed if it wasn't so painful to do.

Tadashi could think of a lot of answers to his question, such as thank you for being my friend, for being by my side, for making me feel love before dying because it is such an amazing feeling and I hope you feel it someday too, even if I am not the one you love, thank you for making me feel alive, thank you for entering my life...

However, he couldn't say it all. Tic tac, he didn't have the time. But he could spend the whole afternoon saying why he loved and was grateful for Kei.

"For... everything?" was all he could say, and he truly meant it, although it seemed more like a question.

There was silence between them. Not the comfortable one. The tense one.

"What... what do you mean?" Kei's voice was worried and it was enough to make Tadashi give up on hiding his sobs and cry all his feelings out.

"Tsukki..." Tadashi said, his voice almost dying "You're a... good... friend... and person..."

"Tadashi, what the fuck is it?" now there was a little more of panic "You're not thinking about _that_ again, are you?"

All Yamaguchi could do was cry. Cry. Cry. Cry. It made his breathing much more difficult, and he could already feel the flowers taking his lungs, slowly.

"Hey, don't do anything stupid. I'm coming, I'm near your house. Five minutes, Yamaguchi. Please. Please hold on. Breath, okay?"

He started to cough, and it had blood and was so agonizing he didn't have the time to think anymore. He just had too much to say, things he never said because he was afraid. But now, the death was like a savior, saving him from possibilities he knew that were terrible. He didn't want to be hated by Kei. He wouldn't be able to live with it.

"Kei, don't... cry... okay? Your smile... is beautiful..."

"Tadashi shut the fuck up! What are you doing, you idiot?" the wind that accompanied his voice, the quick breathing, he was running, Tadashi thought.

"Don't... forget me..."

"I won't because you will live, are you hearing? You will live!" his voice broke, and Yamaguchi thought that maybe he was crying. Just maybe.

"I love... you..." he finally said, and he didn't regret it.

It was good to let him know, to finally say that out loud. Even if he didn't have the slightest chance to be with Kei, it was a relief to let those three little words free when they suffocated him for years, just as the daisies inside him were doing at that moment.

"Tadashi? Hey! I'm coming, ok?" Kei said, and Tadashi smiled a little, seeing how worried he was.

It was fine. He was fine. He was happy. His life could have been happier, but it wasn't bad at all because he had Kei. But he was dying. And the flowers were almost on his throat already, almost making him unable to say anything when he got the courage to say one last thing.

"I'm... sorry..." he interrupted Kei's shouting, and they became worse after he said it. But he didn't care.

He had so much more to say. He wanted to say he was sorry for going so early, for not being able to fulfill their promise from when they were little to travel around the world together, for not finishing the book he borrowed, for liking him more than a friend, for not being enough, for everything.

He didn't hear anything at all anymore, he didn't focus on anything, only the pain that made him contort himself on the ground, the flowers finally starting to get out. He just wished it ended already. He didn't want that anymore. Why did he have to suffer even when he was dying?

But then, there was a loud thud, and Tadashi found himself being held by someone. Someone with blonde hair, long face, and round glasses. Someone whose tears he felt falling on his skin, someone who kissed his lips even if they were covered in blood he was coughing every second.

Someone who said, while crying,

"I love you too, Yamaguchi. I love you so much, stupid. How could you..." that someone said and he heard loud sobs "It's all my fault."

Tadashi would definitely say he was totally wrong. But he couldn't think straight, he couldn't think at all, but that someone was someone familiar.

The last thing he remembers is being held by Tsukki while he headed through the door with him in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> i never said he died, did i? choose your ending
> 
> well i hope you liked it lol
> 
> pls check my other fics for tsukkiyama week!!! and follow me on twitter @luliyts


End file.
